Sorry I have not been around much. We are really busy now on the boat and all it takes at home to go away for 5 or 6 years. We will be renting a house in Treguier for 3 weeks starting in early July then moving on board our Boreal.

I have a question, noticed in some of the pics that in France they use cranes instead of boat hoists on four wheels. Most of the world uses boat hoists as it seems a lot safer for boat and people involved.

Could it be because of the large tides? Or are the facilities in Northern France just behind the times?

I have a question, noticed in some of the pics that in France they use cranes instead of boat hoists on four wheels. Most of the world uses boat hoists as it seems a lot safer for boat and people involved.

Congrats on getting to the moving aboard stage.. must be exciting.. and maybe daunting at the same time.

re travel lifts... a few in Victoria this week might be using cranes.. did you see this??

In meanwhile enjoy Brittany. I am sure you are going to love living in Treguier, it is a lovely town. Take the opportunity to cruise around, that's a great place Brittany: Saint-Malo, Paimpol, Lannion, Pornic and my three favorite, Mont Saint Michele, Quimper and Locronan. Quimper and Locronan are central in the Celtic tradition.

Britons love beer and they have incredibly good traditional beer. You will not find it in restaurants. Try this place in Locronan:

Britons love bear and they have incredibly good traditional bear. You will not find it in restaurants.

Of course not, Paulo, not only are bear almost extinct in France (most likely, because the French love them), but hunting them is illegal. Then again, they also love boar, I guess it is a tad less greasy. It really takes a lot of beer to wash down a bear. Especially, if it's "factory made bear".....
On another note, the J122 is a nice compromise for those who love to cruise fast, I just wish that the draft was less, but that would obviously change her performance.

Of course not, Paulo, not only are bear almost extinct in France (most likely, because the French love them), but hunting them is illegal. Then again, they also love boar, I guess it is a tad less greasy. It really takes a lot of beer to wash down a bear. Especially, if it's "factory made bear".....
....

By the way they are managing to save the bears from extinction with a little help of Slovenian cousins, I mean the bears, not the French. They live on the Pyrenees, on the Spanish and French side and they can be found in greater number in Cantabria. I saw them some years back while cruising with a motorcycle there.

Well, I like bears but like more beer. I leave the bears to you and I will drink the bear

Probably this has been the AC where the boats have suffered from the beginning a bigger technological advancement. AC is more about that than anything else but the size of these boats, stability issues typical of multihulls and pushing the boundaries at 40k, makes them very tricky to sail and sometimes, it seems, dangerous even so it seems that in this case it was not a stability problem:

"Preliminary reports indicate Artemis’s boat didn’t capsize because the sailors were pushing too hard or made a mistake, as was the case with Team Oracle. The problem was with the boat itself, either faulty engineering or faulty construction. The boat simply broke apart under sail, folded, then flipped. The Artemis boat has had a history of cracking and problems with the carbon fiber used in the twin “beams” — the two girders that lash the two narrow hulls together. The boat had been in and out of the shed numerous times in an attempt to correct those problems. Today, however, the forward beam — the girder in front of the sail — gave way during a practice run. The two hulls, no longer connected, began sailing in slightly different directions. This caused one hull to snap just forward of the aft beam, and the mast, held up by high-tension rigging connected to the front of the hulls, simply fell over. The boat began to cartwheel, ultimately trapping Simpson underneath and drowning him.

The Oracle crash last October happened in much worse conditions, and in much rougher seas. The team was risking a turn in a twenty-five knot wind, with an ebb tide that was running at six knots."

A capsize at speed or a broken boat can have nasty consequences at 30k and that's the second one. I don't really know what to think about this but if there is another one probably something has to change. Or maybe not, maybe this dead was just bad luck. When the ORMA raced the grand prix series there was capsizes and nobody died.

And changing subject to old ships: Fantastic video on Yacht magazine about the
voyage of tall ship "Beijing" around Cape Horn. If they had Gopro at that time It would be an incredible one, as it is, using old and big equipment it is just amazing how they managed to get these images:

Thanks for the tips on bears/beers. I will drink those beers as morning breakfast as they sound stout and wholesome, better than cold oatmeal! It will be Gin and tonics for evening sun downers with the many Boreal owners who will be in town while we are there. And I'm sure we must drink a little wine along the way to be polite. " Life is not a practice run it is the real thing." So we work hard and play hard, life is good on most days. Oh did I mention fresh Brittany seafood? "OH La La"
Sounds like we will be able to move on the boat about July 15th, somewhere in that week.

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